


None of Their Stories are Over

by Willdoodleforcoffee



Category: The Fairyland Series - Catherynne M. Valente
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, I Gave Them 3 Kids, One Shot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 01:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21128561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willdoodleforcoffee/pseuds/Willdoodleforcoffee
Summary: Once Upon a Time, there was a girl from very far away and a boy that lived every which way at once.As is such of many stories with similar hooks, they found each other, fell in love, and spent their lives together planting the seeds for more Happily-Ever-Beginnings.But this isn’t about them, not entirely.





	None of Their Stories are Over

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a random fit of inspiration, I haven’t read the books in a hot minute but I did skim them again for relevant details, so there might be a few details that don’t line up and I’m sorry.

Once Upon a Time, there was a girl from very far away and a boy that lived every which way at once.

As is such of many stories with similar hooks, they found each other, fell in love, and spent their lives together planting the seeds for more Happily-Ever-Beginnings.

But this isn’t about them, not entirely. 

Most of Fairyland at least knew bits of the story of September Morning Bell and her Saturday, but it was never only their story. Every narrator who tells it spins it differently, you see. A big red Wyverary would definitely tell it differently than a disgraced king, or girl who tamed giant bicycles, or the shadow of a Marquis. However, you only know a story up to where it says The End.

But there wasn’t an end,

Not even close.

Because Once Upon a Time, a loud but loving family made a home out of a lighthouse in the clouds.

It was built by a pair of newlywed Winds and family members they found for themselves, or who had found them somewhere along the way. Intent on carving out their own little corner of the sky, each brick was laid with love and care and promises of building truly fantastic things together.

So they did.

Three of these things were children, who were as much Marid as they were Human as they were Wind.

The eldest was a little girl with wild blueberry hair, an even wilder smile, and a mole on her cheek. Born on a stormy day in the middle of summer, her parents gave her the name Eleanor, which absolutely made her godfather and namesake cry big firey tears of joy when they met. 

Eleanor had the same fickle relationship with time as her father, and she proudly claimed that she was the Most Marid of her siblings, despite Saturday telling her to stop. She still did, of course, because every child knows things are simply much more fun when your parents forbid them. 

She spent her early teens fidgety and more than a little blue, despite her parents’ reassurances that this wasn’t something to worry about. But wasn’t it though? After all, she had met her parents before they were actually teenagers, when would she meet her child? Did she ever have any? Did she even want any?

At 16, however, she dragged her godbrother on yet another ill advised adventure to the sea. He was a nervous little dragon made of scraps of fabric patched together, no two pieces the least bit alike, by the name of Damask. He’d been found by the Tobacconist and her Librarian a few years after their goddaughter was born, scared and alone and so perfectly both of them and so perfectly himself that they couldn’t not take him in. From their rickety little boat (of their own making, of course) she spotted two Marids dancing and swirling like sea foam on the waves. 

One had brilliant green hair twisted into countless long braids, her laugh echoing like bells. The other had blueberry hair tied up tight, a smile still wild as ever, and a mole on her cheek. She pulled the other Marid to her by one hand in a way Eleanor seen her mother do countless times. 

And like that, everything clicked together with an “Oh!”

Eleanor and Saorsie officially met four years later, and Eleanor brought her home to a lighthouse-full of Winds and Marids and dragons made of stitches and other family members that loved her already. They did in fact have children, a gaggle of lost kids in need of love, who they had found or who had found them, and not one was a Marid that could have told their mothers to come and find them.

Now, with their second daughter, the two Winds had made an embarrassing mistake. They had given her the wrong name! Even the most loving, most careful parents make mistakes, you know. They learn as much as their children every day, growing in ways that aren’t unique to the young or the old. Her name, her true name, the one inscribed below a broken alabaster clock tucked away somewhere and that held power when September called it in full, whispered in the back of her mind _“C’mon now, come find me!”___

_ _So she did. She had circulated through quite a few names before deciding to go find it herself, though it had been hard to keep her heart from swelling like a wave whenever her family offered her a new one to try on. Her parents gave her their blessing through frets, for she was awfully young at the time. Two entire years younger than her mother was when she first came to Fairyland. But, and September knew this for a fact, she was braver than she had been too. So, with her hair all glossy and black and tied up in a thick braid (her father), jaw set and determined (her mother), and an impossibly deep pack filled with empty notebooks and sweets (her siblings), she set off._ _

_ _While this may seem dangerous and reckless, and it most certainly was, she never traveled alone. Everyone in Fairyland knew the winds in some way, and most of them held out a hand for her to take. A kind woman made of soap washed away the dirt on her cheeks with a sudsy handkerchief, a grown changeling with a wry smile and her equally wry mother taught her how to ride a velocipede faster than flying, an entire circus fashioned of paper and ink tripped over themselves to say hello and shower her with embarrassing stories of her father’s circus days, and other friendly faces new and old aided her along._ _

_ _She returned to their lighthouse in the sky nearly a year later, and was swarmed by a family that had missed her like a hole in their hearts. She brought back countless stories, a small bag of trinkets that had made her ache for home, her two traveling companions - a rambunctious changeling boy named Saul and a young fairy with dusty grey moth wings and wide eyes that only went by Q, and, most importantly, her name._ _

_ _Juniper Morning Bell._ _

_ _A great celebration was had, after all, it isn’t every day you find your name, and her family called out “Juniper!” at every turn as if to make up for all the times they hadn’t. The name September and Saturday had given her isn’t spoken anymore. For all names have power, and even dead ones can hold knives in their skeletal hands._ _

_ _Just like her mother, Juniper had gotten a taste of what Fairyland could be and couldn’t just leave it at that. She spent the rest of her youth and a good portion of her adulthood exploring, Saul and Q steadfast at her side all the while._ _

_ _The youngest child of the winds was called Sunday. Out of the three, he took the most after September. Skin dark brown where his sisters’ were dark blue, and soft curls that looked very much the way his mother’s once did. Still, cuttlefish ink swirled below his skin the same as his father’s and, in the right light, blue and green glinted off those curls._ _

_ _He was also the quietest of the three, and that worried his parents a great deal at first. After all, Saturday hadn’t been a quiet child until he was introduced to lions and lobster traps. But Sunday was never a timid child, just an observant one. As soon as he could spell his name, he began recording those observations. He scribbled recipes onto napkins, jotted spells into the corners of his favorite books, and once drew a diagram of an engine onto Aroostook’s side, which September would have scolded him for if the former Model A wasn’t so pleased with it that they wouldn’t let anyone wash the chalk clean. His parents settled for providing him with tall stacks of notebooks and a great blank wall in his room that little Sunday could vandalize to his heart’s content._ _

_ _Sunday had always known the magic of words, long before he could write them himself. He’d spent most of his early days curled up on someone’s lap, whether it was his father’s as he soothed away the hurt from a skinned knee, or his great red uncle’s as he bombarded him with questions only a Librarian could answer, or his grandmother’s as he begged through yawns for another song before bed. You could fall in love with words, or they could take you on all sorts of adventures, or you could even make a home out of them if you wanted. He was taught very early on about the power behind a Once Upon a Time. _ _

_ _He spent a great deal of time in Libraries, learning a very specific flavor of magic that he steeped into all of his words. He also learned to listen, and to tell people’s stories with grace and respect. _ _

_ _He told his grandparents’ story, of love and waiting, and war and searching, and Earth and Fairyland, all at once,_ _

_ _His father’s, told in quiet words and wrung hands and a fear of cages that had never truly gone away,_ _

_ _His mother’s, which had turned a whole world upside down,_ _

_ _His sisters’,_ _

_ _His uncle’s,_ _

_ _And his. The story of an old man raised by sea and Earth, and wind and Fairyland, all at once, as much Marid as he was Human as he was Wind._ _

_ _The story of an old man who only ever fell in love with words, and who was just fine with that. _ _

_ _The story of an old man who learned at a very young age the power of Once Upon a Time and how absolutely rubbish The End is._ _

_ _So, _ _

_ _Once Upon a Time, _ _

_ _There was a girl from very far away and a boy that lived every which way at once. _ _

_ _Together, they built a loud but loving family in a lighthouse in the clouds._ _

_ _And none of their stories are over._ _

_ _Not even close._ _


End file.
